Week 2 Analysis

[Nick Lawrence]

Referees are having a difficult time crediting possessions of balls. They aren't being consistent with declaring possessions at all. Example: not getting credit for pushing a ball meaningfully, but getting a penalty for inconsequentially bumping an opponents ball.

90% of pedestal issues seem to be related to the referees not submitting their scores in a timely manner. It generally seems that this is because they were too busy assigning penalties, or they simply don't look down and confirm that their score was submitted due to the dynamic game. 10% of the time pedestal issues seemed directly related to dead-ball declarations.

We were on the short end of a pedestal issue at the Crossroads Regional. After a cycle of ours was completed, the pedestal failed to illuminate for at least 12-15 seconds. We felt it significantly affected the outcome of the match and warranted a replay, and contested it appropriately. We awaited a final answer, and with involvement from HQ, a replay was not granted. We respected the decision, and moved on and immediately began preparing for the New York City regional.

My only hope is that this issue is fixed for week 3 and beyond. Due to the nature of this game, I strongly feel any significant delay of pedestal illumination directly affects gameplay with only one scoring object on the field at a time. No, we're not going to make a giant storm about this. Referees are human, and field software is written by humans. There are going to be mistakes. As a community, we just need to learn how to deal with these issues. I know we can, we have he smartest people in the world on our side.

I look forward to what this game could be. It definitely has a huge amount of potential to be a fantastic game. I just hope we actually get there and aren't still deciding matches at the Championship Event on cycle delays and seemingly overbearing penalties.

-Nick